Facebook scans messages to boost its ad sales

A California class action lawsuit accuses Facebook of reading users' private messages whenever it pleases, looking for websites that they sent each other for ad opportunities. The social network is also accused of doing so in order to increase the number of "Likes" for those particular websites and portraying a better image of the company in front advertisers.

The foundation of the suit comes from a Swiss security firm, which claimed that "Likes" on a number of pages increase when users exchange that page in private. The lawsuit is demanded Facebook to pay $100 for every day it violated users' privacy or $10K for every user affected.

Of course, Facebook denied the allegations and said they are without merit. Bloomberg notes that Yahoo, LinkedIN and Google face similar kind of allegations.